Brian Gerster Gets First Win of 2018 Season.

Brian Gerster Gets First Win of 2018 Season.

It was a very exciting, chaotic, and a wonderful day, all wrapped into one, for the Auto Value Bumper to Bumper Super Sprints at the Birch Run Speedway and Events Center. We had a couple of rain showers move through after unloading the cars, and again just as a practice session was to begin.

The second one caused the qualifying to be canceled and replaced with a practice session, so the drivers could zero their cars into to an ever-changing track and weather conditions. The heat line ups were established by the current points status of each of the drivers, with the top 3 drivers of each of the 2 heats to a blind draw for the top 6 positions, with the remaining slots going by current points.

The practice session had Brian Gerster as the fastest car again this season, followed Ryan Litt, Jason Blonde, Kevin Feeney, and Derek Snyder being the fastest 5 cars.

In the first heat, Don Dietsch and Kevin Feeney started on the front row, for the 8 lap run. Jason Blonde and Ryan Litt came from the 3rd and 5th spots respectfully and jumped to the front in the first lap. At the checkered flag, it was Litt crossing the line first. This set up Litt, Blonde, and Kevin Feeney for one of the top 6 positions in the feature.

The second heat had Jim Payne and Don Dietsch in the front row followed by Tom Patterson, Tom Geren Jr., and Gerster. Payne led the heat for a couple of laps while Gerster worked his way from the back to the lead to take the checkered flag in the 8-lap feature giving Gerster, Payne, and Geren picks in the top 6 spots in the feature.

With the field set for the feature, Jason Blonde’s daughter pulled the number 1 to put him on the pole for the start with Jim Payne on his right side, second row was Tom Geren Jr. and Brian Gerster. Third row was Kevin Feeney and Ryan Litt. As the cars were warming up, Payne lost his drive shaft and was not able to start the race, shuffling Derek Snyder up to the 6th starting position.

On the green flag, the field quickly took off and with in 2 laps had Gerster, Blonde, Litt, Feeney and Snyder being the top 5 for the majority of the first 12 laps until Litt came out of gear on lap 13 brining out the caution flag. Litt was re-fired and sent to the tail for the restart. Litt was the talk of many of the remaining laps as he worked each lap to move from the tail of the pack to passing Doug Dietsch for 5th, Snyder for 4th, and Feeney for 3rd, placing him where he was when he came out of gear. Litt was not happy with that and captured 2nd when he went around Blonde. But there were just not enough laps left for him to catch up to Gerster. At the checker it was Gerster, Litt, Blonde, Feeney, and Snyder for your top 5 on the front stretch. Doug Dietsch, Geren, Patterson, Erwin, and Don Dietsch completed the top 10 finishers for our only appearance at the Birch Run Speedway and Event Center in the 2018 season.